The Reality of God's Reconciliation

Reconciliation simply means a change in status, and it is a major issue recognizing reconciliation. Reconciliation from God’s advantage point is an accomplished fact, and God is reconciled where the totality of the sin debt of all men is concerned. None of us measure up to the perfection of God, and the only reason God could say through Paul, “Grace and Peace be unto you” is because his son fully paid the price. How many of us have grown up with the idea that God has to make a decision at some point in our life whether or not to forgive us for our sins? God forgiving us is not something he must decided to do.

The truth Paul has proclaimed in all of his epistles is we could not get right with God in a million life times of trial and error. We could never make ourselves right with God, and he had to do what we could not do for ourselves. God had to make us right with him, and he did so through the finished work of his perfectly righteous son. How many of our sins were future when Christ died for our sins? All of them were future, and God placed them all on his perfectly righteous son. Christ’s test score is written on our paper, it is an amazing transfer.

The issue of sin was settled as a result of Christ’s death upon the tree of crucifixion, it is a son issue today, not a sin issue. Will we accept what Jesus Christ accomplished as a result of his death upon the tree of crucifixion or will we reject it, the son is the issue with God today. God’s attitude of love forces no one to take him at his word. God gives all the choice to accept what Christ accomplished on their behalf today, or to reject it. God purchased men out of sins dominion, never to be returned to the market place of sin again. By removing the sin issue from the table of God’s justice, God effectively canceled Satan’s ownership of all mankind.

Reconciliation has to do with God’s justice being satisfied for sins, reconciliation is a sin issue. Many teachers will tell us that we can be reconciled, but that is not true, reconciliation was accomplished as a result of Christ’s death upon the tree of crucifixion, where Christ became sin for the entire human race. Our sins were not stored on Christ to be brought back later; our sins were paid for by him, and he satisfied totally the justice of God for those sins.

Justification, on the other hand, is something entirely different; it has to do with a judicial decree of the very righteousness of God himself freely attributed to our account. To be justified (the gift declaration of the very righteousness of God) means to receive that gift that came to all men. No one can receive that unless that person is placed into Christ. Being placed into Christ, joined to Christ is the method whereby God justifies us; or righteousifies us. We must believe that Christ put our sins (past, present and future) away forever as a result of his death, in order to be placed into Christ to have righteousness freely attributed to our account.

reply to post by newnature


In reference to your wonderful OP,

Here is a most excellent excerpt from Saint Paul's second epistle to the Church at Corinth, chapter five, verses sixteen through twenty one;

16 From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once regarded Christ from a human point of view, we regard him thus no longer. 17 Therefore, if any one is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come. 18 All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation;

19 that is, God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. 20 So we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We beseech you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. 21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

reply to post by newnature

Reconciliation simply means a change in status . . .

The reconciliation Paul was talking about was the problem of people hating God for being unfair.
God had to change that feeling against Him by making a demonstration to show how He was really a fair God.
He did this through Jesus and his sacrifice to establish an intermediary service between God and Man that was available to anyone who belied in Jesus and his sacrifice.

God is not concerned about sins, as if there was something forcing Him to do something about them as in punishing people for them.

Now of course if you were a Jew, back in that time when Paul was writing Romans, you would be in need of reconciliation with God because you would believe that you were being punished for some sort of national crime that caused their ruin as far as being this great independent kingdom that they thought they deserved to be, seeing how they were descended from Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and all that entails.

And here were all these gentiles with all sorts of gods, who seemed to the Jews to be getting off Scott free, with all their crimes of 'idolatry'.
Well they were angry and blamed God. They were the ones in need of reconciliation.
God did that through Jesus by having him become the mercy seat, the place where the manifestation of God appeared to men. This was the place where the reconciliation took place, where the temple was made right again by the high priest. The purified temple, with God in our midst.

reply to post by newnature

Justification, on the other hand, is something entirely different; it has to do with a judicial decree of the very righteousness of God himself freely attributed to our account.

Here you are following Luther, and not Paul.
Do you understand the difference?
One was a man who had direct contact with the risen Christ, taken to heaven and commissioned as an Apostle.
The other was a Catholic monk who got access to the Erasmus version of the Greek New Testament and proceeded to translate it into German. He was an awful man who persecuted people who disagreed with him and incited wars with other principalities that did not support him.
"A judicial decree" is one possible definition of justification, and the one Luther went with, but it is not the definition that Paul was working with.
What Paul was talking about was the Christian analogue of the Old Testament idea of being either in Israel, or exiled to outside the camp, where justified was being in the church, that you are made right, not by following laws like not touching pigs, in the old law institution, but by Faith, in the new institution of Christ.
If you were "In Christ" according to Paul, you were 'saved', in that you were sanctified to live a righteous life.
So to boil it down to a slogan, you are saved by faith. What it really means is that you are made right, sanctified, then you become holy and righteous, then you are ready to be glorified.